1. Field of Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate in general to communication networks. More specifically, the embodiments of the invention relate to methods and systems for managing bandwidth in the communication networks.
2. Description of the Background Art
Today many homes are provided with relatively high-speed broadband Internet access. Some types of activities and services that are provided to a home include web page viewing, file transfers, voice communication (e.g., Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)), Video on Demand (VoD) or near Video on demand (nVoD) including streaming audio and video, online gaming, etc. These are loosely classified as three types of data—Voice, Video and Integrated Data (VVID)—with online gaming sometimes discussed as a fourth type.
Residential Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) subscribers are faced with the issue of matching their application bandwidth needs with the entry-level bandwidth provided by DSL service provider. Some services, such as VoIP require a guaranteed amount of bandwidth or the service's performance may become unacceptable. For example, if a VoIP phone device cannot transmit or receive its data fast enough, a person in a phone conversation can experience interruptions, degradation of sound quality, or other unacceptable effects. On the other hand, a service such as downloading a file in a background, or batch mode can often tolerate a slowdown or short suspension of the service since the user is not paying immediate attention to the operation of the service.
In most of the cases the need for a higher bandwidth is temporary. Therefore, a service level upgrade is not justifiable as the investment is very high.
TR-058 allows Application Service Providers (ASPs) to offer their applications at speeds independent of traditional dial up Internet access. Therefore, ASPs can provide large amount of bandwidth to each subscriber. However, it may lead to bandwidth exhaust on the Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) uplink. In addition, many applications, for example, content download such as large Windows XP service packs or Multicast Video Content, and on-line gaming might not be offered by the ASP or might not have considered adding value using TR-058's “big pipe” approach.